Howl (Winter Pass Wolves Book 1) by Vivian Wood, Amelie Hunt Page A

returns on a real estate deal, then pronounced that the deal fell through and the money was gone with the wind.
    No, no. None of that had driven Penny away, besotted as she was. After all, Penny was a short, curvy redhead with freckles and a timid personality. Steve was a muscular, tanned charmer who’d never met a stranger, her complete and magnetic opposite. To be fair, Steve was kind of short. He also lacked the ability to… fulfill… Penny in the bedroom, but she let that slide.
    All the time, wondering why Steve was with her when he could be with someone else.
    And then Penny caught Steve with someone else. Her boss, actually. The tall, elegant, snooty headmistress at Heston Academy. Specifically, she caught Steve banging Headmistress Samuels on his desk, during what was usually the one lunch period a week that Penny and Steve both had free. He’d canceled at the last minute, and Penny showed up with some takeout, trying to be sweet.
    Instead, she’d got an eyeful. When her boss finally managed to notice Penny standing there, brown paper bag of burgers and fries in hand, she gracefully pushed Steve off and stood. Then she righted her skirt and cleared her throat.
    I suppose there isn’t a better time to tell you, then. Heston Academy has decided to go in another direction with your position, Penelope. We’re letting you go.
    It sounded a lot like what Steve said later, after a silent car ride back to their shared apartment.
    You’re just not what I need, Penny. Look at you, and look at me. What did you expect? Still, take your time moving out…
    Three weeks later, things were so bad that when Penny’s crazy, narcissistic mother called and invited her home for a long weekend, promising that her stepfather was gone on a retreat of some kind and that Penny wouldn’t bother him , Penny actually jumped at the chance. All her stuff was in storage, since her name wasn’t on the lease of her and Steve’s place. She had no job and no prospects. Her sometime-friend Amber, whose couch she’d been crashing on, had politely asked her to find somewhere else to stay because Penny was such a bummer .
    Then it had all boiled down to one moment. Penny pulled up outside her mother’s house. The front door swung open as Penny climbed the porch steps. Her mother and stepfather came out…
    Followed by her ex, roses in one hand, a ring box in the other.
    “He called and said you two had a fight,” her mother gushed, holding her own Steve’s hand. “He sounded so remorseful, and we always did like you two together…”
    That did it. Finally, after months of pent-up frustration and blaming herself, something inside Penny broke.
    She turned and fled to her car, backing all the way down the driveway and flooring it down the rural one-lane road, heedless of the steadily increasing snowfall.
    All of which led to this singular moment of foolishness, with Penny sitting in her car and crying because she was stuck between an untenable situation and a freaking mountain of snow… and right now, facing the snow was easier.
    Penny glanced at her fuel gauge and frowned. Only a third of a tank. Wishing she’d filled up before she got into Winter Pass, she sighed and tried to think of what to do next. Leaning over to the glove box, she popped it open and rifled through the contents. To her relief, she had a local map stacked in with her insurance paperwork and other car junk.
    Unfolding it across the steering wheel, Penny found her mom’s house and then traced the turns she’d made. Tapping her fingertip on the map, she found the spot where she was idling, then looked all around it for something nearby, anywhere she could go to get out of the storm.
    “Come on, come on…” Penny whispered. Part of her wanted to shout that she’d literally let herself freeze before going back to her mother’s house, but in truth she’d managed to get almost five miles away and now she might be too far away to go back… even in dire